When The End Isn't The End: Trump's Conviction and the Fallout

This should be over. That it isn't tells us everything.

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Well, that just about does it

That was a text message I received as former president Donald Trump was being found guilty of 34 felonies by a jury of his peers. I was out running, trying my damndest to avoid uneven sidewalk. Roughly once a month I’ll get a little too comfortable in my gait and take an ugly tumble, leaving my arms and legs bloody and bruised for days. But a former president becoming a convicted felon wasn’t something I could ignore.

The friend who texted me the message has been on this thing as long as I have. When I went viral in 2016 covering a Trump Rally and warning people that something was very, very, very wrong, they were supportive and knew immediately something awful was brewing. But they had retained hope over the years that Trump’s domination of the Republican Party was just one wrong move from collapsing. My illusions to that end had weakened in 2015 after Trump attacked former standard bearer John McCain and then dissolved entirely after the Access Hollywood tape was published on October 7th - my birthday - just as Hurricane Matthew was bearing down on my home in Georgia.

Watching 62 million people vote for a man roughly a month after receiving video evidence of him confessing to sexual assault tends to change a person’s perspective.

This morning, the fallout is already apparent. In a society that functioned, Trump would have dropped out of the 2020 Presidential Election and the Republican Party would be scurrying to replace him. Possibly begging Nikki Haley to stop scrawling encouragement for war crimes on the side of bombs long enough to get a team together. Instead, the crazy train continues rolling on.

While Trump equates his legal peril with the fate of the United States, his campaign has announced that, following the verdict, they raked in nearly $35 million dollars in donations.

Rather than wrestle with the implication of supporting a convicted felon, Republicans and Right Wing influencers have completely ignored the facts of the case and doubled and tripled-down on painting the legal system as a weapon of the “Deep State” and advocating for violent reprisals, including the jailing of political enemies and, in some cases, pushing for outright conflict.

In my research into the Far Right (as I detailed on last night’s live reaction to the convictions on The Muckrake Podcast), I’ve seen them openly plot terroristic actions that could capitalize on the outrage and, hopefully, plunge the country into a full-blown civil war that could benefit white supremacists.

Since, I’ve talked with a handful of Democratic strategists and have heard the same thing over and over. President Joe Biden and his campaign, along with the majority of the Democratic Party, feel it’s unnecessary to engage with the fact that the leader of the Republican Party is now a convicted felon and will let it “speak for itself.” This, of course, is the same tact they’ve chosen with the corrupt Supreme Court stripping women of their reproductive rights. It’s wrongheaded, politically stupid, and just adds to the overall worsening of conditions.

This survey speaks volumes. Trump’s political career should be done. Over. Kaput. And the decision handed down by those twelve brave jurors should have been the obituary of this moment. That it wasn’t, that it doesn’t even approach that reality, tells us everything we need to know.

What Does It Mean That This Isn’t The End?

As I discussed in an earlier article about the obsession with Trump’s legal cases, there is a lucrative market for telling liberals that Trump is a) an abberation and b) that our system is currently taking care of the problem for us. The underlying implication, which has been the case for years now, is that our institutions and foundations are fundamentally solid and have been disrupted by Trump. This means those who support the status quo can rest easy. We can still return to a pre-2016 America as soon as everything gets sorted out with Trump and we can get back to “normal,” or the continued operating procedures.

Anyone who has spent time studying cults understands they can take many forms. Also, they have a tendency to predict apocalypses, or giant shifts, and when those predictions and prophecies turn sour the leaders simply…change the date. As Trump was convicted, one apocalypse was replaced with another. Instead of Trump dropping out of the race or possibly being prevented from running for re-election, we were told that this conviction may not be the end, but certainly the ramifications of it have sealed the deal. The apocalypse changed from May 30th to November 5th. Don’t worry, the end of the old world is still coming. It’s just going to take a few more months.

But the truth is that we must grapple with something a little messier. Any of the decorum we believed existed before - and which was upheld by politicians reacting to scandal or censure by respectably retreating from the public eye or giving up their ambitions - has been shattered. Trump didn’t create this, he simply served as the sensible and logical evolution of what was already happening. American politicians had either survived scandals or wrongdoing in the past because these things were kept under wraps. They were “open secrets.” Their peers and journalists knew about them, but didn’t care to report them. The legal system largely didn’t prosecute them because the business of the American system has never been dragging powerful, white men into a courtroom and airing their sins.

On the same day Trump was convicted a story was published in Slate that detailed what former Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt had seen and heard while in Trump’s proximity. He confirmed a long-held rumor that Trump was heard by several people on the show using the n-word during discussions about the show’s finale. This “rumor” had existed well before Trump ever won the election. Back then it was believed that if this was confirmed he would never gain power. Well, it’s confirmed now, and it simply joins the confession of sexual assault. Only, it’s not even being discussed in 2024. Because the environment has so radically changed it doesn’t even matter anymore.

The Right does not care about any of this. Why? Because it’s inconsequential. The “principles” we’ve been told they carry - small government, fiscal and personal responsibility, traditional values - were never real to begin with. They were cudgels that could be used against their enemies in the pursuit of power. That pursuit of power is all that matters to The Right, because power represents the ability to oppress others to further your own ends. Trump, as a candidate, has promised to embolden government power for Right Wing ends, never cared about deficits, and had spent his life behaving as a loud and proud libertine. As President, he did what he promised, enlarging the scope of government reach, created record deficits, and was never, not once, held back by so much as the specter of conservative or traditional values. In this case alone, we see Trump using the power of his corporation to waste money on a dalliance with an adult film star.

So it goes.

The time has long passed to recognize that we are in a struggle for power. The old framework of simply moving from election to election and choosing between candidates who were either center, center-left, or center-right, and the result being largely consistent and predictable, are gone. We are facing a movement that, in lockstep with other authoritarian movements around the world, is interested in literally razing liberal democracy to the ground. They don’t care what Trump did or what Trump does. As long as he works as a weapon on their behalf, anything is acceptable.

It is also time to give up old notions of politics. We have a choice right now, and it isn’t just between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, or Red and Blue. Due to the efforts of the GOP, the international authoritarian movement, and neoliberals of both parties, we are sprinting rightward. This entire episode with Trump’s trial and the reverberations makes it abundantly clear how this functions. Things are not “returning to normal.” They are getting worse and more authoritarian by the day. One party has come to represent a gradual movement replete with expressions of “empathy” and “regret.” The other is possessed with a mad and fascistic urge to drive us all into the abyss.

Something has to change. This is an opportunity, perhaps for those who have been yoked to the belief that our system would right itself and that Trump is somehow the only obstacle to a better future, to rub our eyes and recognize those prophecies were just marketing opportunities. Hokum. Feel good stories. It is a chance to look at the collected masses engaged in collective delusions and free yourself before it’s too late. The day of the appointed apocalypse came and went. We’re still standing here and those who led us to the mountainside to witness the culmination are telling us of their new prophecies. To grab our calendars and re-calibrate.

We don’t have to listen to them anymore.

We could steel ourselves for the harsh reality we’ve been avoiding for so long. We could lay aside our robes and all the false lies. The path back will be painful and I cannot tell you it will not hurt or that it won’t be uncomfortable. But I can promise you that’s where true freedom lies.